Search engines are a powerful tool for locating documents and data from documents in a large database of documents, such as the documents on the World Wide Web (WWW) or the documents stored on the computers of an Intranet. The documents and/or data from the documents are located in response to a search query submitted by a user.
The World Wide Web and the web sites (including pages or documents) within it are a vast source of information. Some web sites specifically focus on classified postings. Classified postings typically allow users to post a description of a product, service, or property for sale or rent and provide a mechanism for interested buyers/renters to contact the user who posted the description. Usually classified websites are area specific. For example, the classified website Craigslist has a San Francisco Bay Area page that includes categories such as housing, for sale, jobs, personals, community, etc. If a renter wishes to find an apartment in Mountain View, he may go to a listing page, which provides a listing of rental properties available in the San Francisco Bay Area. The renter can then read through the listing page to find if any properties in Mountain View are available for rent (“e.g. $945 Gorgeous Studio”—Mountain View.) If so, the renter can click on a link to read a detailed description of the property on a details page and potentially see images of the property. Then the same actions can be performed for any other items listed on the classified website. In this example, if the user is not satisfied with the results provided by Craigslist, the user would then have to go to another classified website to search for additional property rentals available in Mountain View. This process of finding items on classified websites by individually drilling down to the item(s) of interest is time consuming and consequently frustrating for the user.